Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

First let me start off by saying there will be massive spoilers in this entry. I usually try to avoid spoilers when reviewing a game, but in this case I felt it was necessary because the story was the most important part about my playing TFU. Unfortunately I can't do an LJ cut on Blogger, so if you don't want anything spoiled I suggest you skip down to the gameplay section, or ignore this entry entirely.

The Story

So the point of the story in The Force Unleashed is to gap the bridge between Episode III and IV. How well it does that is debatable at best. I didn't think the game did a terrible job of tying things together, but it did make for some annoying twist, and a couple of other loose ends.

The game starts off with you playing as Darth Vader as you invade the Wookie home planet of Kashyyk. Darth Vader than finds a young boy gifted with the Force. Vader than raises the boy as his secret apprentice Star Killer and the game begins proper. This is where things start to get ugly. Star Killer isn't nearly as bad ass as previews would lead you to believe. He's kind of a bitch and he's not really that evil. He just follows Darth Vader loyally. You meet his ship's crew which consist of your staple comic relief Droid, and love interest Juno Eclipse.

Your first few missions have you going around hunting down remaining Jedi, including Rahm Kota, who plays a more important role later on, and infamous Jedi Master Shaak Ti. After finishing off Shaak Ti, Star Killer goes to meet with Vader, and the Emperor just so happens to show up. So Darth Vader kicks Star Killers ass in an attempt to save his own ass. Later Vader explains his reasons to Star Killer and gives him a new mission of finding an army to fight against the Empire. But first we gotta take the worst turn in the game.

Apparently due to his love interest with Juno, Star Killer starts to see the Light Side of things. So an already disappointing Sith becomes another aspiring Jedi. This helps to move things along in the canon, but it doesn't make the transformation any less retarded. Anyway, Star Killer meets up with Rahm Kota who is still alive, and they decide to try and form the Rebel Alliance. So Kota points Star Killer in the direction of Leia Organa, which eventually leads to Bail Organa. With the key figures in place The Rebel Alliance is about to be formed. Until The Empire Storms in, with Vader leading the charge.

The Rebel leaders get captured and Star Killer gets left for dead. But he doesn't die just yet. Star Killer and Juno head for the very incomplete Death Star and Star Killer infiltrates it. After making his way through the Death Star, Star Killer faces his Sith Master - Darth Vader in a pretty epic fight that leaves Vader pretty fucked up. At this point you get to choose the canonical Light Side ending, or the retardedly pointless Dark Side ending.

In the true ending, Star Killer fights against the Empire after refusing to finish off Darth Vader, and instead choosing to save Kota's life. What follows is one of the dumbest fights in the game, followed by the Emperor killing Star Killer while everyone else gets away. The Rebel Alliance is officially formed, and enter Episode IV.

In the false ending, Star Killer kills Darth Vader, and than the Emperor ask Star Killer to be his new apprentice. Star Killer refuses, and than the Emperor kills everyone except for Star Killer. I'm assuming Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, Juno, Proxy, and just about everyone. We than see Star Killer clad in the Sith Stalker armor and reduced to being a puppet to carry out the Emperor's bidding.

Now with all that said, the story accomplishes what it was intended to, minus the whole false ending thing. However that doesn't really make it good, I suppose it was okay, but it left me wanting. I'm not really sure how they could have done it differently though, seeing as how I'm not some sort of Expanded Universe Author, but I'm sure they could've come up with something better. Than again, maybe I'm just being too picky, or letting the other weak aspects of the game affect my judgement.

More Spoilers

In this section I basically wanted to complain about certain aspects of the game that would still be considered spoilerish, and that didn't really fit into the story summary. So there might be some gameplay stuff here, and there might be some story related items. In any case, they all share one thing in common. I didn't like them.

For starters, what happens to Juno, Proxy, Kota, and Maris Brood. I'm not really into Expanded Universe, so that could all be explained there. Or these characters could've just been created for the sole purpose of this game. I guess it's similar to the Prequel movies, in that you can't really add anything new to movies that came out a few decades ago. But you could remove the loose ends before then. In any case, they didn't and these characters go unaccounted for.

The Star Destroyer segment of the game is like something out of Too Human. It's that fucking bad. Honestly, for something that this game was supposedly based off of, how the fuck could they mess this up so badly? Not only is the entire process of pulling the thing out of the sky boring as hell, it's also made annoyingly hard thanks to the respawning TIE-Fighters that do waaay too much damage. I was about ready to give up on the game altogether until I entered a few cheats to make things slightly easier. The best tip I can offer you is to have Force Grip maxed out and stand on either side of the platform and pull TIE-Fighters out of the air. Sheesh.

The Fight with the Emperor was really fucking stupid, especially after the epic battle with Darth Vader. Of course, I guess it's in the canon that the Emperor fights like a little bitch anyway. He basically flies around the area throwing shit at you, hitting you with force lightning, and summoning guards. You just have to avoid most of this shit, and dash in to hit him a few times with the Lightsaber. Rinse and Repete. It's a really shitty way to end the game, and considering this is your "Reward" for choosing the Light Side. If you pick the nonsensical Dark Side you get to fight against Vader again. Lame.

These last two I actually like, surprising I know. Though I do have a complaint about one of them - that's more like it.

First, the battle with Proxy is dumb - UNTIL he for whatever reason turns into Darth Maul. This is retarded, but I still really enjoyed it. Duel of the Fates was playing and everything, it was epic. Sorta. The battle is way too god damn easy, granted I was playing on Easy mode, but there are way too many parts in the game that are needlessly hard for me to bother playing on a harder difficulty. So the epic battle was kind of ruined because of this. I still enjoyed it though.

And finally, The Darth Vader fight was really cool. It's gotta be the best part of the game. That's not saying too much, but trust me - it's cool. In the last stage of the battle you're both fighting in a darker area and it looks like some of the epic battles from the movies. And from the way I was wailing on Vader it really reminded me of Luke VS Vader in Return of The Jedi. Finally at the end of the battle Star Killer royally fucks up Vader's shit. It almost made him redeemable - almost.

The Gameplay

Christ this is turning out way longer than I'd like for a game I didn't even really enjoy that much. Anyway, thank you for joining us if you've skipped the massive block of spoiler text above. In the final segment of this review I will trash this mediocre game, and rant about some of it's more serious flaws. Fun stuff.

TFU is your typical run of the mill action game, with some force powers tossed in. The basic Lightsaber combat is average at best, though it becomes a little better as you unlock more and more combos. It's the force powers that would set this game apart from other games in the genre. But sadly LucasArts decided they didn't want you to use your force powers on most of the enemies in the game.

See, one of the most annoying parts about TFU to me is that you don't feel nearly as powerful as you should be. You're a Sith Apprentice, you've got all kinds of bad ass Force Powers, and a Lightsaber. But just about every Stormtrooper in the galaxy is either pretty resistant to your Lightsaber, or has some way to block out your force powers. Yes, amazingly during this stretch of time in the Star Wars universe your average solider either had knowledge of the force or some gadget to negate it. All of this goes out the window by the time Episode IV happens though, and it wasn't present in the Prequel movies either.

Yes, I understand that they did this to make the game more challenging. But it's not fun. Honestly I would've preferred to be a bad ass killing machine. Slicing stuff up with my Lightsaber in one stroke - not twelve. And using the force to devastate everything around me. Yes, you can pull a Star Destroyer out of the air, but no you can't force grab that blue Stormtrooper.

Enemy placement gets a bit ridiculous at times to. You might find yourself constantly getting stunned or knocked down unable to do anything while being beaten on by a hoard of enemies. Other times you'll fall to your death after you've been pushed out of the stage by... just about anything.

There are certain parts of the game that are just not fun, no matter how you slice it. And the difficulty can spike quite a bit for no reason. Even on the easiest setting you can find yourself in some pretty frustrating situations.

I also encountered a few bugs in the game where I got knocked into an object ans was stuck, forcing me to exit game (there is no reload checkpoint option or anything of the sort) and reload my last save. This also almost caused me to stop playing the game when it happened.

In closing, if you're a fan of the Star Wars story, rent this sometime and try to play through it. That isn't to say the story is exceptionally good either, but it should be the main reason you want to check the game out. If you're looking for a good action game? Go pick up Devil May Cry 4, or Ninja Gaiden 2 instead.